Ticketmaster must face FTC ticket resale lawsuit after judge denies dismissal bid

Ticketmaster must face the US Federal Trade Commission in court after a federal judge refused to dismiss the agency's ticket resale lawsuit.

The order was issued on Monday, Sept. 28, by Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong. The ruling holds that the FTC's claims are legally sufficient to move forward. It does not decide whether those claims are true, according to Billboard.

The FTC sued Ticketmaster and its parent company Live Nation under the Better Online Ticket Sales (BOTS) Act, the US law that bans the use of software and other tactics to get around ticket purchase limits. Seven states joined the agency in bringing the case. Ticketmaster controls 80% of primary ticketing for major venues, Reuters reported.

At the centre of the case is the relationship between Ticketmaster and ticket brokers. The FTC alleged that Ticketmaster allowed brokers to bypass purchase limits by using hundreds or thousands of accounts under fake names. It then allowed those brokers to resell the tickets on its own secondary market, generating billions of dollars in resale fees.

Ticketmaster argued the BOTS Act applies only to individual resellers, not to ticketing platforms that host them. Judge Frimpong rejected that reading. She ruled the law does not preclude platforms from facing liability.

The judge pointed to an internal email quoted in the ruling. In it, a senior Ticketmaster executive said the company would “turn a blind eye as a matter of policy” to brokers getting around purchase limits. The judge said the alleged behaviour could support the FTC’s case if proved at trial.

The ruling also keeps alive a second part of the case on pricing. The judge said the FTC can pursue claims that Ticketmaster engaged in deceptive business practices through drip pricing, where mandatory fees are added at checkout rather than in the advertised price. The FTC has alleged those fees ran as high as 44% of a ticket’s cost, according to the FTC.

The sums involved are large. Consumers paid more than $16.4 billion in mandatory fees on Ticketmaster purchases from 2019 through 2024, according to the FTC’s complaint. The agency also alleged Ticketmaster earned hundreds of millions of dollars from selling tickets that brokers had acquired illegally.

Ticketmaster said it remains the leader in the fight against bots and described the lawsuit as misguided. It said it believes the case will ultimately fail. The case now moves forward. It will enter the discovery phase, the evidence-gathering stage where both sides exchange documents and take testimony.

For fans, this means the dispute is about two familiar frustrations: tickets selling out fast and then reappearing at higher prices, and a checkout total that looks very different from the listed price.